Without the Sky

My parents bought me a trampoline when I was six years old.

By then, my parents had changed their minds again and continued with the move to the suburbs. I don't mean to make them seem so indecisive, because it was a good thing. They liked living in the city, and I enjoyed the few years I got to reside in the suburbs. We moved from New York City when I was three years old. We moved back again when I was eight.

I'm not going to skip around this – having wings as a kid is weird, and raises a damn lot of difficult questions. Children get to ask their parents about why the sky is blue, why zebras have stripes. Call me selfish, but I was a little more concerned with myself.

I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now. I'm not close to understanding it. I still have the same questions as I did when I was young. Some things don't change, and I'm not sure whether it's a naivety I'm glad to keep.

I asked my parents, “Why is that woman staring at me?”

I asked my parents, “Why do we have to cut holes in my shirts?”

I asked my parents, “Why doesn't he have these?”

I asked my parents, “Was I supposed to be born a bird?”

I knew I was supposed to fly, even then. It's a constant hunger. Something I feel I can never have, but it's not through lack of trying. I tried so hard. It consumed me.

It started when I clambered onto the seat of the couch, only to tumble off again a few moments later. It grew bigger. I needed taller things. I jumped off chairs, my bed, even the table and kitchen counter when my parents weren't paying attention. Don't blame them, I was desperate. I am desperate.

It had to stop when I jumped off the roof and broke my leg. My mother made me promise, and I couldn't break a promise to one of the only people that loved me. Because there was only me, my mom, and my dad. That was my entire world. Just us, encased in a mass of people determined to stare me down and figure me out.

So, when I woke up on my sixth birthday, I raced into my parents room, only to find it empty. I searched the entire house, but I couldn't find them anywhere. I was terrified I'd lost them, but when I ventured out into the back yard, I found them sitting on a large trampoline. They were cross-legged and shivering, but they were smiling.

Of course, I scrambled over the metal bars and jumped in circles around them. They started to jump with me. It was kind of one of my greatest mornings ever.

The trampoline allowed me to continue my attempts to soar without putting myself into too much danger. I guess that's why my mother was able to sacrifice her lawn for it. It obscured the view of her pretty garden she tended to. But as I said, my parents love me.

I spent all my free time there. My mom would have to drag me inside at night. I would complain so much. I wanted to stay out there forever, because I just knew the wind was about to pick up. I knew the wind was about to pick me up. Pick me up and take me away to the bird family I was supposed to have.

I had always just guessed that God had mixed my parents and the birds up. I guessed that maybe they had similar last names or something. Maybe God made a typo.

I don't know. But everyone else says God put me here – that he's the reason I'm like this.

God is strangely cruel. I don't know if I believe someone like that exists. I just don't know. I don't know anything, and I probably never will. Maybe it would be easier to believe that all this was just an accident. That I'm an accident. Because I just don't seem to have a reason to be.

All I want is a reason.